Published 5:37 pm, Thursday, April 21, 2011

As Midlanders gathered Thursday to support China Aid Association, four evangelists near Beijing were arrested and interrogated during a religious crackdown carried out in preparation for Easter.

Praying for those church leaders and acknowledging God's providence in placing them in a police station hungry for the word of God is what Bob Fu, president and founder of China Aid Association, said he wants Midlanders to keep in mind.

Because it's through the support of those in West Texas that he and others who spoke at the organization's annual fundraiser Thursday said the persecuted in China are able to have their history recorded and their plights known.

"We are not alone because you stand with us on our side," Fu said, reading a letter written to him by a house church pastor.

The Midland-based nonprofit works to expose the abuses of religious and human rights leaders in China and also to help them and their families with legal aid and financial support.

Scott Flipse, deputy director of policy and research at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said China is at a tipping point. For years, he said people thought when China become an economic giant, advances also would be made in the way its leaders treat citizens.

Unfortunately, Flipse said the opposite has happened. The country uses its technology to further persecute and its leaders have only become more aggressive in advancing their own interests over the rights of others.

"We thought that prosperity would change China -- allow more freedoms," he said, speaking to the about 150 present at the Hilton Midland Plaza Thursday evening. "That hasn't happened."

But, he said as one of several internationally who work to form policy and push for support of religious freedoms in China, there is hope for an eventual shift, in large part, because of China Aid Association.

"For China to change, I believe China Aid needs to be there," he said.

He said it's Fu and China Aid that policy makers call when they want to know what's happening in China. It's Fu who is in contact with every influential Christian Chinese lawyer and house church pastor, providing world leaders information not released by the Chinese government.

"The work of China Aid and Bob Fu is making history," he said.

Tom White, executive director of Voice of the Martyrs-USA, agreed and said it was a blessing Fu and his wife, Heidi, came to the U.S. when they fled from China.

He scrolled through pictures of people being baptized in a pool of water gathered on a tarp and of a young girl burned by Muslims for her faith in Christ. Echoing the words of the apostle Paul, he said Christians in China and surrounding countries are persecuted from every angle. But, he said they are not destroyed because they have the hope of their savior.

He added that leaning toward Fu, when men like the evangelists arrested in Beijing on Thursday are put into difficult situations, they know who put them there and the work that can be done through their trials.